The Spectacular City, Mexico, and Colonial Hispanic Literary Culture

by Stephanie Merrim

Overview

Winner, Katherine Singer Kovacs Prize, Modern Language Association, 2010

The Spectacular City, Mexico, and Colonial Hispanic Literary Culture tracks the three spectacular forces of New World literary culture—cities, festivals, and wonder—from the sixteenth to the seventeenth century, from the Old World to the New, and from Mexico to Colombia, Peru, and Bolivia. It treats a multitude of imperialist and anti-imperialist texts in depth, including poetry, drama, protofiction, historiography, and journalism. While several of the landmark authors studied, including Hernán Cortés and Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, are familiar, others have received remarkably little critical attention. Similarly, in spotlighting creole writers, Merrim reveals an intertextual tradition in Mexico that spans two centuries. Because the spectacular city reaches its peak in the seventeenth century, Merrim's book also theorizes and details the spirited work of the New World Baroque. The result is the rich examination of a trajectory that leads from the Renaissance ordered city to the energetic revolts of the spectacular city and the New World Baroque.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780292737464
Publisher:	University of Texas Press
Publication date:	11/01/2010
Series:	Joe R. and Teresa Lozano Long Series in Latin American and Latino Art and Culture
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	377
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Stephanie Merrim is Royce Family Professor of Comparative Literature and Hispanic Studies at Brown University. Her previous books include Early Modern Women's Writing and Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz.

Table of Contents

• Preface
• Introduction. Road Map
• Chapter 1. Agile Platforms of the Spectacular City: The New World and the Old
• Chapter 2. Order and Concert
• Chapter 3. Balbuena's "La grandeza mexicana" and the Advent of the Spectacular City
• Chapter 4. Balbuena's Spectacular City and the Creole Cause
• Chapter 5. Engaging Plurality: Baroque Plenitude and the Spectacular City in Mexico
• Chapter 6. "To Know the All": The Spectacular Esoteric City in Mexico
• Chapter 7. Babel: Wild Work of the New World Baroque
• Appendix. Chronology of Principal Works
• Notes
• Works Cited
• Index

What People are Saying About This

Nina M. Scott

A scholarly tour de force. . . . Stephanie Merrim is one of the most respected colonial scholars in the Americas, and this book will only add another well-deserved star to her crown.